by TZN Correspondent
ZIMBABWE’s new Information minister, Christopher Mushowe, this week summoned newspaper editors to a meeting where he hectored them against publishing negative stories on President Robert Mugabe’s government and his ZANU-PF party.
Mushowe read the riot act to editors at a meeting held at his offices on Thursday.
The meeting followed an earlier meeting he had with media executives, at which he also threatened to take drastic action against those newspapers that continue to report on the succession-related factional fights in ZANU-PF, especially those that publish negative stories on President Mugabe and his increasingly powerful wife, Grace.
One editor who spoke to Thezimbabwenewslive.com said although Mushowe tried hard to make his threats to the private media in the most roundabout way, the threats were still very loud and clear.
“He tried as much as he could to appear less threatening, but his message was very clear to everyone. He was saying, “Stop it!” to us,” the editor said. “Everyone could tell that he was trying hard to restrain himself from just saying it plainly.”
Mushowe, who recently replaced Jonathan Moyo at the Information, Media and Broadcasting Services ministry, called the meetings purportedly to meet with media stakeholders and discuss the contents of the findings of a panel set up by Moyo to establish the problems the media in Zimbabwe face.
Sources say Moyo, who was moved to the Higher and Tertiary Education ministry, still pulls the strings at the ministry. Mushowe’s threats follow similar, but veiled, threats made by his permanent secretary, George Charamba, to the private media a fortnight ago, in the government-owned Sunday Mail newspaper. Charamba, who writes an acerbic column in The Herald under the pen name Nathaniel Manheru, also doubles up as President Mugabe’s spokesman.
“We are really worried. Here we are talking of a government that has closed private newspapers before,” a source that attended the earlier meeting with media executives said.
Sources said after Mushowe and Charamba met with media executives, representatives from the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of The Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday and those from Trevor Ncube’s Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), publishers of the Zimbabwe Independent, The Standard as well as NewsDay, were asked to stay behind where they were strictly warned against continuing to give space to former Vice President Joice Mujuru and members of her People First movement.
“We were warned that if we continue publishing creaming headlines on Mugabe and his wife, as well as giving space to Mujuru and her movement, something drastic is going to happen. We are really scared. It is clear that these guys are going for broke as they seek to ensure that nothing negative is written about Grace who has clearly started preparing to take over from Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe,” the source added.
The source said reading from Mushowe warning that “people out there will very soon stop buying your newspapers”, in the near future it might get difficult for the private media to distribute its newspapers outside major urban centres as was the case before when ZANU-PF mobilised its thugs to harass people who distributed and those that bought the newspapers in remote places.
The siege on the private media also involves hacking online news sites on Zimbabwe where most of the negatives stories on president Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party are published. This publication suffered from such attacks last week.
